Throughout our convoluted histories, stories have had a way of reappearing under different forms and guises; we can never be certain of when a story was told for the first time, only that it will be not the last. Before the first chronicle of travel there must have been an Odyssey of which we now...
I wish I could say that The Woman who Fed the Dogs is the hardest novel I have ever written, but the opposite is true. It is the most distressful, but that’s a different matter. The novel is conceived as a monologue and tries to imagine what might have gone on in the mind of...
Lots of writers seem to really hate writing. For them, sitting down in front of the computer or typewriter or notepad and forcing out their daily word count is like pulling teeth, except rather than simply pulling them out through their mouth, they’re having to pull them down, back through their gums, to be extracted...
The world’s a weird place. Sorry to state the obvious, but it really is. And it’s a lot to take in when you stop to think about it. Luckily, life is generally constructed in such a way that your world starts small and sensible and gradually gets larger and weirder. There’s a gradient, a logical,...
It’s a bit ridiculous to choose only ten examples of how world mythology has inspired popular culture, as the examples range into the thousands across books, films, TV, comics, games, music, fashion, and more. Any Top 10 can only be an intensely personal one, so that’s what I’ve chosen: ten of my personal favourites, taken...
Shakespeare has mattered ever since his name first appeared in print in 1593 with his erotic and entertaining poem ‘Venus and Adonis’. He was 29 years old. For much of the poem the goddess of love is naked and begging for sex before Adonis, but he resists her advances. ‘Venus and Adonis’ was a sensation...
The decision to change their five-year-old daughter’s name was a bold one for Ahmed and Fatma to make. Kuwait was, after all, a country tangled in red tape. But like most of their fellow citizens in the year 1991, Ahmed and Fatma wanted to commemorate their nation’s gratitude to America. Fatma was in her late...
I really loved the piece of land I grew up on. I spent so much time alone there, looking at the things around me, that sometimes I thought I myself was one of the trees that grew there. I didn’t rule out the possibility that my head might sprout leaves or that mangoes might grow...
Christopher Bollen’s second novel Orient takes its title from the name of the small hamlet on the tip of the North Fork of Long Island. His story begins as summer draws to a close. Mills Chevern, a 19-year-old foster-home kid-turned-drifter who hails from California is taken pity on by Orient native Paul Benchley, a middle-aged...
I want things that I read to tattoo me. Like globally significant moments from my lifetime and memory; Mandela’s release, Diana’s death; I can remember where I was when I read fiction that scars me. I like scars, as I like tattoos – they remind me of a particular moment and the associated emotions. They...
Laura Lippman’s latest novel Hush Hush sees her ballsy Baltimore private detective Tess Monaghan as a flustered new parent plunged into a disturbing case involving the death of an infant and a venomous stalker. She shares her tips on maintaining suspense in crime fiction by keeping readers sympathetic, engaged and always on the alert. 1. Don’t be...
So you want to be a writer? According to popular mythology, all you need to do is hole up for a weekend or three, drink copious amounts of coffee and/or smoke a lot of cigarettes and put pen to paper. Words of genius will instantly pour out of you. After that comes The Auction, which...
